Archive for January, 2010

Drawing on the Imagination

This is the result of a class I am taking called “Abstract Representation” taught by Jordan Bruns at the Yellow Barn Studio in Glen Echo, MD. Jordan is a new teacher at the school and maintains a studio there as well. I had been fascinated by his large swirling drawings and paintings that start with random marks or paint drippings but then turn into vast ancient ruins that don’t exactly obey the laws of gravity but seem real enough to get lost in. I started this work by covering a large sheet of heavy paper with a coating of powdered graphite. All the marks on it were made by erasing away the graphite to the white of the paper. I then went back in with more powdered graphite applied with a Q-tip. Somewhere along the way the random markings I made begin to turn into images–buildings,trees and clouds. Eventually this drawing coalesced into a scene of  a strange city at night. It is interesting how this process works; you start with seemingly nonobjective marks on paper and then suddenly memories and experiences start to come up. It seems the trick is to wait until the right image comes along, the one that won’t minimize the abstract power of the work but harmonize with it.

Under Construction

Like the previous work, this is a “painting construction”. That is the painting starts with a general idea of the process and then is pieced together on the fly. The subject matter, which here looks like you are looking up at some office building under construction and seeing some leaves floating down towards you, is accidental and comes towards the end of the work. I started with masking out some diagonal lines on a small sheet of watercolor paper with painter’s tape, then filling them in quickly. Then reverse the maks and filled in the sky with a large soft brush which gives some very subtle gradations in color.The contrast of these soft gradations and the hard edges seems to give the painting some depth.

Making It Up

Instead of painting from a still life of model, I thought I would try to make something up. I just started this small work filling in the background with a smooth gradation with a large brush, then filled in some white shapes here and some dark green shapes there. It seemed a little skewed to the blue-green range and was crying for some red. What better way to tie the painting together than with a big red “X”? I added a little house and connected the white cloud shapes to the house’s chimney. Is the painting a warning to clean your chimney before you light a fire? Or is it just a silly excuse to paint. You be the judge.

You can take a boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of a boy.

Though recently I have been drawing mostly, I have also been working in acrylic lately to ease myself back into painting. I am also looking for a subject matter that I can sink my teeth into for a while. Since I have done several paintings of urban scenes that have been well received, I thought I would continue in that vein. Typically landscape painting focuses on more rural scenes probably because people find natural subjects more pleasant and relaxing to look at. I mean who wants to look at the freeway after driving on it all day? But living only blocks from the national Beltway, the subject matter is close at hand for me. And maybe there will be some kind of catharsis in the viewer who will take a new look at their surroundings on their daily commute. Anyway I have always been more of a city boy.